1935-2024
The reason I write today is because another old coach, my first track coach, died last week. Ed Jones was a fixture as a coach and teacher at Belmont High School, Dayton, Ohio for many years, and after retiring he was a longtime pole vault official at high school meets in the Dayton area. Ed and I remained in contact all these years since he first coached me as a freshman in 1958. He passed away peacefully at his home with his wife Connie at his side. Just fell asleep on the couch at age 91.
Ed graduated from Fairview High School (same high school attended by Edwin Moses twenty years later) and had been a pole vaulter at Miami of Ohio under the legendary coach George Rider. When I was a freshman, Ed taught photography and physical education. I remember he let me run with the varsity, and my first meet was at West Carrollton High School. Got my name in the box score for a fourth place finish in the mile, and I was sold on the sport. But I still transitioned gradually from basketball.
Ed was totally no nonsense when it came to sport and training and life for that matter. Yet he was willing to listen to his athletes and get their input when deciding what kinds of workouts to develop. He was way ahead of his time in introducing weight training as part of our development program. Since he was primarily a pole vaulter, and I wanted to be a middle distance runner, we learned a lot together as that aspect of track and field was not really up his alley. There were perhaps two books on track in the Dayton Public Library which I kept checked out most of track season. One was written by Franz Stampfl, the Austrian interval running coach, and the other was a photography book by Leni Reifenstahl, the German filmmaker of the 1930’s. We learned together from Stampfl how to go about getting ready to run the mile and half mile. The end result for me was a college scholarship, and for Ed a cornucopia of what to do and not do in coaching runners. In addition to track and field, Ed started the gymnastics program at our high school and was even better known in that sport as a successful coach. He also gave the girls in the school their first ever opportunity to compete in a varsity sport.
I was away from home for many years, but I always stopped to see Ed and Connie Jones whenever I was back in town. One of their five kids, Brian, was a very good pole vaulter and competed at the US Naval Academy. After a tour in China, my wife and I ended up settling down in the Dayton area and bought Ed’s first family home in Kettering where we would live for over twenty years until we moved up to Canada. We had been evacuated out of China a few days after the Tiananmen Student Massacre.
That first year back in Dayton after the China adventure left us with some PTSD and no immediate job prospects. Ed offered both me and my son a high school freshman to work with him in his home remodeling business. By then he had retired from teaching. It actually led to a career for my son Jacques. We learned how houses were built and how you repaired them. Ed’s humor came out in those days that I hadn’t seen as an athlete. Two of his favorite quips were, “I’ve cut that board three times and it’s still too short.” And “A man riding by on a galloping horse won’t notice that.” He was fair and honest. Never needed to advertise. His work came from recommendations from satisfied customers. As a former pole vaulter he wasn't beyond taking some risks on the job. Once we had to remove a limb of a tree that was threatening to fall and crush a garage. Ed shinnied up the tree about 30 feet with a chain saw and a rope in tow. He tied the rope out a way on the limb then got back closer to the trunk and told us to take up the slack on the rope. "When I cut through this limb, you guys start running and don't let it hit the garage." His plan worked. The limb came down, missed the garage and my son and I as well.
In retrospect, I see myself as very fortunate to have been under the leadership and guidance of Ed Jones. When a child goes to school or joins a team, their parents turn them over to hopefully a responsible adult who will guide them in the right direction and teach them to look for, find, and hone their talents. In the world there are too many parents who think they can control the destinies of their children and that they can buy their way into the next stage of life. It rarely works that way, and the child soon finds themself torn between family expectations and an undeserving unqualified person to guide them along. I was lucky that there was a good man in place ready to take over the job of showing me how to comport myself, work hard, and hopefully reap the benefits, with no guarantees. The only thing my parents had to pay was a city tax to support a decent public education system. Today the world is full of incompetent parents and coaches. I was able to avoid those pitfalls with the help of my parents and Ed Jones.
George Brose
Below is a 1961 article about Ed Jones and me from the Dayton Journal Herald.
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